Haremhabs Great Edict

Having assumed royal powers, Haremhab composed and published
a decree, his Great Edict. The fragmentary text is inscribed on the largest
stele ever found in Egypt. G. Maspero discovered it in Karnak in 1882.

Hear ye these commands which my majesty has made
for the first time, governing the whole land, when my majesty remembered
these cases of oppression. . . . And he gave his edict to deliver
the Egyptians from the oppressions which were among them.
(1)

The king who bestowed the crown on Haremhab was exalted
by him, and called god and Haremhab called himself his son
; at the same time the rule of the land preceding that of Haremhab was
branded by him as a wicked rule. Here again is an incongruity, unless
the king who gave him the crown was not the king who ruled Egypt as a
native ruler. The rule of Haremhab was that of a king named to administer
Egypt by the decree of the foreign king.

Haremhabs Great Edict is a manifesto of his policy
for keeping the state in order. The language of the Edict differs from
the usual mode of expression of Egyptian edicts. It is a dry juridical
document, clear and, apart from the introduction, free from the usual
verbosity and figurative exaltations of Egyptian inscriptions. In such
language were the legal documents of the Assyrians written.

Throughout the Edict of Haremhab emphasis is placed on
the principle of justice. The Edict might be entitled The
Justice of the King. (2)

Sennacherib wrote of himself as one who likes justice,
who established order. (3) Haremhab
used the same sort of language.

The Edict of Haremhab contains provisions for martial law.
Punishment for offenders was severe: anyone interfering with boat traffic
on the Nile, his nose shall be cut off and he shall be sent to Tharu.
(4) This penalty was not known in Egypt
before Haremhab;(5) but
in the time of Sennacherib it was a customary punishment inflicted by
the Assyrians on vanquished peoples. Sennacherib wrote in the annals of
his eighth campaign, against Elam: With sharp swords I cut off their
noses. (6)

For this reason Tharu, the place of exile of the mutilated
offenders, was called Rhinocorura or Rhinocolura by Greek authors, meaning
cut-off noses. (7) Rhinocolura
is el-Arish on the Palestinian border of Egypt.(8)

Another punishment prescribed in Haremhabs Edict
is for a soldier accused of stealing hides: one shall apply the
law to him by beating him with 100 blows and 5 open wounds. (9)

Egyptian justice was traditionally marked by its humane
treatment of criminals. From the first legal text that become available
under the Old Kingdom, thrugh the Middle Kingdom and much of the New Kingdomin
fact, until the time of Haremhab and the Great Edictthe punishment
for most crimes involved the confiscation of a persons property
and removal from office, in some cases forced labor. Only high treason,
directed agaist the person of the king, was punishable by death. Although
kings had themselves portrayed as killing prisoners of war, the maiming
of Egyptian prisoners by disfiguring their faces is so uncharacteristic
of the Egyptian idea of justice that some scholars have looked for a foreign
influence to explain the introduction of these practices in the time of
Haremhab.(10) Punishments
reminiscent of those mentioned in Haremhabs Decreebeatings,
cutting-off of ears, nose, lips, and pulling out of the hairare
prescribed in Assyrian law codes of the second millennium. There are no
Assyrian law codes extant from the time of Sennacheribbut clearly,
there was a tradition and practice of harsh punishments in Assyria. Its
introduction into Egypt, however, was only possible at the time that Egypt
fell under direct Assyrian domination, and his occurred for the first
time in the days of Sennacherib.

The Edict confirms what we have already deduced from the
study of the Memphite tomb of Haremhab and of his coronation text: the
pharaoh was an appointee of his Assyrian overlord. He refers to himself
in terms not dissimilar from those with which Sennacherib, on the Taylor
Prism, refers to his august person, stressing love of justice and support
of the needy, but vengeance upon the offenders and the insubmissive. Sennacherib
introduces himself in the opening passage as The wise ruler (literally,
shepherd ), favorite of the great gods, guardian of the right,
lover of justice, who comes to the aid of the needy, who turns (his thoughts)
to pious deeds, perfect hero, mighty man; first among the princes, the
flame that consumes the insubmissive . . . (11)
We have already noted Haremhabs comparison of his overlord to a
flame. (12)

References

Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt, III.
sec. 67. Cf. the translation by Maspero in Davis, The Tombs of
Harmhabi and Toutankhamanou (London, 1912), pp. 45-57, and by
Pflueger in The Journal of Near Eastern Studies 5 (1946), pp.
260-268.

D. Lorton, The Treatment of Criminals
in Ancient Egypt, Journal of the Economic and Social History
of the Orient 20 (197~), 24.

Luckenbill, Records of Assyria, II. [While
punishments inflicted upon prisoners and those meted out to prisoners
of war are not strictly comparable, it must be remembered that Egypt
was, under Haremhab, in the position of a subjugated country, and
under thus under a form of martial law.]

Strabo, XVI.ii.31; Diodorus, I.60; see the discussion
on the identification of Tharu with Avaris in Volume I of Ages
in Chaos, pp. 86-89.

For a discussion of the location of Tharu and
Avaris, see A. Gardiner in The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology
3 (1916), p. 101.

Lorton, The Treatment of Prisoners in
Ancient Egypt, p. 56.

Ibid., pp. 50ff. Only one case of punishment
by beating is known earlier, from the time of Thutmose III (pp. 23f).

Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib

In a text from his Memphite tomb. See above,
section: Haremhab Appointed to Administer Egypt: By Whom?